Products of a Dark Time: Industrial Revolution Poster Review (Group E)

by: Ian Ballou

                                                           Horror is Everywhere
While curating for the the group E poster Products of a Dark Time I was shocked by many of the things that I learned from the process of creating the poster. One of the most shocking things I learned while making this poster was the increase of slaves from the 1840s through the 1860s. There was a steady increase from 1770-1840 of slaves in the south. But at around the end of the industrial revolution in the 1860s when cotton was at its highest demand the number of slaves in the south skyrocketed. In 1840 Texas and a few other states started at owning a crazy 2,500,000 slaves each. By 1860 Texas was home to about 3,750,000 slaves. Over one and a quarter million slaves were brought to Texas during the twenty year period of the end of the industrial revolution.

The other sources that we had in our poster included a map of the cotton trade that came from America and other countries. Another one of our sources was a cartoon of a slave working in the fields whose labor went into making all the money from the factories. Yet another one of our sources showed the Boot Cotton Mill located in Lowell Massachusetts, which was running from 1835 to the early 1900s. One of our interesting sources was on Richard Arkwright who was a leading inventor and entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution, and is known as the inventor of the modern factory and the father of the Industrial Revolution. Our last source was on the number of cotton mills created during the later times of the industrial Revolution, in 1834 there was 22 mills in Lowell. By 1858 there was 52 mills in Lowell, a huge increase in mills and production in a 24 year span.


The problem that we were trying to show was the impact of the industrial revolution, and how the increase in the demand of cotton caused a huge increase in the number of slaves and child workers, in cotton fields and factories which is what we hope the viewers of our exhibit will learn from the poster.  Our title talks about this issue by saying that from this "dark time" of the increase in child labor and slaves, vast amounts of cotton products and technological increases stemmed from these dark things.  The most important thing that I learned from creating this poster was the all of the things that stemmed off from the industrial revolution, both bad and good and how something as simple as an increase in the need for cotton could effect so many lives both past and present.

From the other four exhibits I learned more about how the higher demand in cotton created terrible living conditions and appalling amounts of child labor. I also learned about the great advancements in technology brought on by the industrial revolution that helped shape our world to how it is today.